Following the crumbs:Mike Johnston passed along an...

Following the crumbs:

Mike Johnston passed along an urban folk tale that’s been making the rounds of USC, where he works. It’s a copy of a letter originally sent out over the Internet, though (of course) no one knows by whom or when. The author identifies herself only as a mother taking revenge on Neiman Marcus because she was allegedly duped in a store restaurant in Dallas.

After finishing a meal, the mother claims, she and her daughter tried a “Neiman Marcus Cookie,” which tasted so good they requested the recipe. The waitress said she couldn’t give it away. Asked how much it would cost to buy it, the waitress supposedly smiled and said, “Two-fifty.” Mom told her to add it to the credit card bill.

A month later the woman looked at her VISA statement and realized to her horror that the cost was $250, not $2.50. When she protested, the store said that’s the way the cookie crumbles, in so many words. So, she says, she told a Neiman Marcus rep “that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover will have a $250 cookie recipe from Neiman Marcus for nothing.”

The rep supposedly said, “I wish you wouldn’t do this.”

The rest of the letter consists of the recipe. We were going to publish it but then we remembered you’re trying to cut calories.

COOKIE MONSTER ? Anyway, the recipe story is baloney, responds Liz Barrett, a Neiman Marcus spokeswoman.

“We’ve heard it for years,” she said. “It was dormant for several months, but in the last month or so I’ve been getting calls about it from all over, even London, Milan and Paris. When something gets on the Internet. . . .”

For the record, Barrett said, “We’ve never heard of this cookie. We don’t sell our recipes--we give them away, upon request. And we don’t accept VISA.”

In some versions of this urban folk tale, by the way, the recipe is for brownies. In some, it’s a Mrs. Fields cookie. And, in some, the incident occurred in Denver.

And, no, we’re still not going to give out the recipe so quit bugging us.

HAVING YOUR CAKE AND . . . Neiman Marcus’ Barrett says that a similar urban myth dates back to the 1930s, this one involving a “lady who dined at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. She liked the red velvet cake so much she asked for the recipe. When she received her hotel bill she had been charged $100 for the recipe.”

Wish we could get our hands on that recipe.

HOW POTENT ARE THEIR NONALCOHOLIC DRINKS ? Continuing our food theme, Fred Rodriguez of L.A. sent along a Westside restaurant’s menu that is ideal for vegetarians (see excerpt). Vegetarians with weak wills.

miscelLAny “Why Wisconsin Hates Us,” says a billboard put out by a California trade group. The ad’s answer: California’s cheese production. Maybe. But don’t forget the 1994 Wisconsin-UCLA Rose Bowl fiasco, which left numerous out-of-state cheese heads without tickets. It’s surprising that no Wisconsinite took revenge by putting a version of UCLA’s playbook on the Internet.